Popular - Fame is ultimately about corruption, of your life, your dreams, your normalcy.

Popular: 1x11 Ex, Lies and a Videotape

Josh 

It’s easy to forget that while Sam and Brooke suffer from the fact that their respective parent forces them to live together, regardless of their sworn arch-nemesisesissness, Mike and Jane are still good parents. They are supportive of their children, provide them with a loving and safe home, and kindly steer them towards a less destructive path whenever they are going off into the direction of wacky campaigning against each other. Most of their friends aren’t so lucky: with the exception of Harrison, they are all facing a more challenging family situation. Nicole’s mother is emotionally absent, Mary Cherry mother is… Cherry Cherry, Carmen’s parents haven’t done anything to make her feel more comfortable in her own body, ever, Lily grows up under dire economic circumstances, and Josh, as we learn in this episode, has a father who mistakes his wife for the maid, ordering his breakfast every morning (“Jean, coffee”), and desperately clings to some ancient idea of masculinity that includes being a quarterback but definitely doesn’t allow Josh to perform in the starring role of a school play. Josh is doing everything right: he’s a better football player than any of his brothers, he gets good grades – and yet, he isn’t the person his father wants him to be. 

Josh: I hate it when he’s mean to you. I hate it.
Jean: Hey. You were terrific standing up to him. You wanna do something for me? You stay in this play and you do the best damn job you can, and you be proud about it. Don’t hide. Don’t like I have for years. This is your choice, not his.

Sam and Brooke

A producer for Enterteenment Today saw Sam’s documentary on popularity and “hasn’t had material that quote unquote real in a long time”, so she wants Sam to start pitching some content ideas for her – and, since Sam’s relationship with hairbrushes is complicated and on-off, she wants Brooke to be the one presenting, the face on screen. Sam likes the idea of having her work reach a wider audience, but it forces her to work with Brooke, and this also plays in wonderfully into her well-hidden insecurities about her looks (because she doesn’t really want to admit that it bothers her, to be considered the person with the ideas, but not the looks to present them, but of course it does). 

Harrison: Since when do you care who’s on camera, Sam? You wanna be a serious journalist, not some blow-dried on-air automaton, remember?
Sam: Look, we busted our butts filming those interviews and then Brooke shows up for five presence-filled minutes and suddenly she’s a star?
Harrison: Don’t burn me at the stake but maybe it won’t be that bad.
Sam: This is a disaster. How am I supposed to pitch real journalism ideas to Jamie with Brooke in the room? I’m just gonna blow this whole thing off.
Harrison: Oh okay, fine, bail. Throw away a golden opportunity to show off your vision because you’re too filled with your petty Brooke-rivalry to see the big picture.

Sam listens to Harrison and pitches an idea about teenage poverty, but Jamie isn’t too excited (she wants something that “doesn’t involve close-ups of lice”), so Brooke jumps in with her very own idea: What do celebrities think about being famous? Jamie likes her idea better because it will involve pretty people and tells Sammy to fix the details, which Sam promptly does: by proposing that the celebrity they examine be Josh, putting Brooke in the awkward position of not being able to avoid her ex-boyfriend. Sam’s totally getting better at the whole revenge thing, doesn’t she (“You’re not a producer. You’re a sadist.”)? 

The episode has a well-executed theme: ambition getting in the way of friendship. Carmen is now a cheerleader and sort of abandoning Lily for the newly found popularity the position offers, and Sam and Brooke, while competing with each other, are also overlooking the fact that their subject, Josh, needs them as friends, not as two people trying to find an interesting story to tell. When Brooke interviews him, it’s the first time these two have spoken to each other, and Josh starts to break down and share his personal issues which have become so pressing now, days before the premiere of the play. 

Josh: Part of me wonders if it isn’t some stupid rebellion, me wanting to get busted by my dad so he pays attention to me.
Brooke: So you’re doing this strictly for attention that you feel you’re lacking in your life?
Josh: Isn’t that what fame is about? I mean, when all is said and done it’s just temporary medication, right, to numb the hurt or something. I mean everyone thinks it’s so cool to be popular and be the center of attention, and it can be amazing, don’t get me wrong, it can be great to pass for a winning touchdown or be the star of a show or whatever, but if you do these things, and you’re never satisfied, and you can’t figure out what drives you, and no praise is ever good enough, and you feel like your decision is possibly breaking up your parents’ marriage, you win, but you lose. Is all I’m saying.

Instead of helping him emotionally, Brooke decides that in order to get the whole story and the big dramatic moment they need to get the attention of the audience, she will use her connection to Josh’s family to get an interview with his mum; Josh is outraged when he finds out. His mum tries to explain to him that this will help him to stand up against his father, but Josh is angry because “everybody is chasing after him for their own agenda” and using him. He finally decides to appear in the musical, not for the benefit of Brooke and Sam, not to finally stand up to his father, but because “I wanna do this, so I’m doing this” – and Brooke realizes that she is maybe falling in love with him again. 

Josh performs, and sees his father in the audience, but halfway through his dad leaves, disgusted, and Josh follows him outside, with the camera following him. Sam and Brooke try to keep Harrison from filming the showdown, the one dramatic moment they’ve sort of all worked towards, but Jamie tells him to continue filming. 

Josh: Don’t walk out on me, dad.
James: You know, Josh, It would be just great if I could stay. But I can’t watch this. It’s not what I want for you. It’s not the kind of person I want you to be.
Josh: Dad, I have to be who I wanna be, not who you want me to be.
James: Josh, you’re sixteen years old. You don’t know what you want, you don’t know who you are.
Josh: I’m trying to figure it out, dad, that’s why I’m doing this. Dad, why can’t you just understand?
James: Why can’t you just be like your brothers? Dammit, Josh, John and Rickie never put me through anything like this.
Josh: Why can’t I be like my brothers?
James: Yes.
Josh: You don’t even know my brothers, dad. You don’t even know your own sons? Do you know Rickie hates the college you made him go to? You know he calls me every Saturday night drunk out of his mind and completely freaked out because you made him join a fraternity and he hates it there? Do you know John is in a bad marriage? And he knew it wasn’t gonna work, he knew it, but he was too afraid to call it off because he didn’t want you to think he failed. And now he’s got two kids, and he’s stuck. John and Rickie hate you, dad, you know that? They hate you. And I don’t wanna be like them, because I don’t wanna hate you, but right now, I do. I do. I’ve got a show to finish.

Josh tries so desperately to become a good person and he is mostly succeeding, he IS a much better person than his dad already – and in the end, James is the one left alone. His son leaves, his wife leaves. Sometimes that’s the only way a toxic relationship can end. 

Brooke and Sam have gotten exactly the kind of story that they were supposed to produce: a family drama – but they decide that they value their friendship higher than the prospect of becoming famous. 

Sam: The thing is, however, after we watched the tape we both got uncomfortable for several reasons. First is, we realized we were bad friends.
Brooke: And the second is, we used our subject. We went straight for his vulnerabilities to serve our own needs. Josh needed me as a friend and I wasn’t there for him because I wanted to be as famous as the person I was covering. Sam did too.
Sam: Not really, she exaggerates.
Brooke: Sam?
Sam: Ok. I did. To wrap things up, what we realized is fame is ultimately about corruption, of your life, your dreams, your normalcy. All for some attention that’s not real to begin with. And if you want to make that sacrifice it’s cool and fine…
Brooke: But it has to be your decision, right? Well Josh never got a chance to make that decision because we made it for him. So we erased the tape.
Sam: And maybe we won’t get to walk down that red carpet or get better reservations at restaurants and stuff, but at least we’ll be able to sleep at night.
Brooke: Yeah. Well, mostly. Sam snores. My doorframe literally rattles.
Sam: Brooke talks in her sleep, these lurid fantasies that would straighten the curls right out of your hair.
Brooke: So anyway, I’m Brooke McQueen.
Sam: And I’m Sam McPherson. 

Because ultimately, the teenagers on this show have a sound moral compass, and they sometimes manage to beat the system that wants them to grow up into Jamies from Enterteenment Tonight and James Fords. 

Carmen

Carmen is on the other side now, if the divide between popular and unpopular people Popular has been slowly deconstructing in the past episodes really is the decisive force in the alignment of Kennedy High students. Sam and Lily are supportive to her, but they also have concerns: how will this change their friendship? “Is it too late to do an intervention?” Carmen soon finds out that there are perks attached to being a cheerleader – Nicole, Brooke, Poppy and Mary Cherry start to include her in their social events (taking pictures for the DMV, because that’s the one picture that is going to be shown everywhere in case they get brutally murdered, like Gwyneth Paltrow in Se7en), and the other students at the school regard her differently…. Especially April Tuna, with her soft spot for popular girls and her talent for creepy stalking (“What did she smell like”, her sister asks, “like teen spirit”, April replies, still star struck). The episode attempts to explain to the audience that Carmen now functions as a sort of idol to those how still dwell in the social underworld of Kennedy High, but it is, sadly, an example where the over-the-topness of its storytelling stands in the way of the genuine point, made in the end.

Carmen: You have to quit worshipping me. I mean, I’m an ordinary person. Just like you.
April: You’re not like me. You rose up from the reject swamp to become somebody. I am nothing but a sick joke. They make fun of me everyday at this school, you know. I know I’m a bad dresser and all, but I don’t have the money for better clothes, so I try and do the vintage thing: it doesn’t work. I say awkward things when I’m nervous, and I just hate…
Carmen: What. What do you hate?
April: Being me.
Carmen: You know, April, I used to feel just like you. Everybody made fun of me. And I pretty much hated everything about myself. But... the way I got over it was by concentrating on what was good about me. I love dancing. And I worked really hard. I concentrated on the positive, you know? So come on, we are not leaving here until you think of one thing you really like about yourself.
April: Well… I am a genius at macramé.  

I think it’s a good moment between the two, a surprisingly genuine one, and Adria Dawn is good at April Tuna, but the scene suffers from the fact that April has, only a few scenes before, purchased Carmen’s used underwear from Mary Cherry. She isn’t ostracised because her family is poor and can’t afford expensive clothes, or because she is socially awkward; she is an outsider because she is written as a ridiculous, over-the-top character, someone so strange she doesn’t even fit in with Sam’s group, a parody – and it’s frustrating to see that undermine the possibility of April being taken seriously, because there would be so much potential. The same thing worked brilliantly with Sketch on Skins, but it doesn’t, at all, here. 

Lily is also frustrated when Carmen leaves her behind for her new posse (“And see if I can find a new best friend since the cheerleaders have taken mine.”), but in the end, when she realizes what sort of impact Carmen has on other students like April, she comes around, because Carmen is using her fame for good, even if sometimes she needs to be reminded of the fact that it comes with a lot of responsibility, as well, and the obligation to remember who her real friends are. 

Random notes: 

Mary Cherry: Don’t worry about it, darl, I mean these things are random. I took the very same test and my career match-up said ‘Mary Cherry, the career that’s best suited for you is serial killer’. I mean, oh god, it’s crazy. 

Jamie: Maybe you’ll make a quote unquote “difference in people’s lives”, whatever.

Sam’s pitch: “Right. Okay. Well. Here it goes: We live in boom times, right, the internet, the stock market, everyone is doing well. My idea is, in these times of prosperity, what about those teens down on their luck? I propose an in-depth piece on teenage runaways. 

WE LIVE IN BOOM TIMES, THE INTERNET, THE STOCK MARKET, EVERYONE IS DOING WELL. 

Lol. Also, ouch. 

Sam: Harrison, why don’t you go out to Toys”R”Us and get a puppet to replace Brooke.

One phrase to describe Sam and Brooke bickering over the production of their segment: LOVERS’ QUARREL. Seriously. Also, the whole “WHEN WOMEN LIVE TOGETHER THEIR CYCLES OFTEN COINCIDE.” thingy is soon going to result in one of the worst episodes of Popular, the sort of episode that only a room full of male writers could come up with (or, as I like to call it, “two seasons of Glee before they decided to have female writers; Marti Noxon”)

“Welcome to the world of road rage.”

In a telling moment Brooke is interviewing the only black person present and is quickly running away from her once the white heterosexual boy appears. META!!

Oh, and talking about Sketch, if you're not watching the second season of Luther: do. The lack of Alice is sad, but Aimee-Ffion Edwards' Jenny Jones is one of those haunting, beautiful, stunning characters that will never, ever leave you. 

Obscure pop cultural reference: 

Brooke name-drops a couple of people in her popularity-idea-pitch, which served as a nice reminder that 1998 was the year of Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys. MY EARLY YOUTH. Which I would never admit to remembering, but those darn songs, they come up and you still remember all the lyrics, despite not even understanding them when they came out originally. 

Obligatory movie reference: 

Steven Soderbergh. Not one of my favourite movies though. I’d recommend seeing King of the Hill. (Also, in coincidence of the day: I was going to mention that Soderbergh's movie title has the Oxford comma and the episode doesn't, and then I thought, NOBODY CARES, NOBODY NOTICES THESE THINGS, and then the Huffington Post announced that Oxford no longer supports the use of the Oxford comma)